100 Books Like Live from New York

The gold standard of rock and roll oral histories. Two authors, years and years in the making, chronicling one of music's most incendiary eras. "Will you die for the music?" Lou Reed asks in the early pages. In other words, how many knife fights, sleepless nights, and dead friends would it take to stop you from chasing artistic salvation?

Reading this book while I wrote my own made me realize just how sterilized my scene (like much of America) had gotten by the turn of the millennium. Third-wave emo wasn't famously dangerous or gritty, but many of its icons grappled with life-threatening addiction and mental health issues (even more than I expected going in). Yet, thankfully, almost all of those band members are still with us. Please Kill Me illuminated this. It's no accident the final word in my book is "survive."

The quintessential book for anyone writing a modern biography, as well as a page-turning read. Jean Stein and George Plimpton brilliantly create a moving portrait of an Andy Warhol acolyte who became a Warhol Superstar and then an enduring icon of the 1960s, before dying of a drug overdose at age 28. A fascinating oral history that simultaneously depicts a beautiful, glamourous, and troubled young woman and a nation undergoing a paradigm shift.

This is a classic oral history of jobs in what older people call “the good old days.”  It is told from the perspective of the individuals doing the jobs they were talking about, and it reveals how interesting their day-to-day experience is.

The reminder for today, especially in our remote workplaces, is how important relationships with people at work are to our happiness and well-being. It’s also a reminder of how important it is for people to have some control over what they do and to feel invested in their work.

People want to do things well and take pride in what they do. We forget all this when we think of workers as widgets to be optimized. 

Dazed and Confused, Richard Linklater’s plot-light, pot-heavy 1993 film about Texas teens hanging out on the last day of school in 1976, is perhaps my favorite movie ever, so I was already inclined to love this oral history about the film’s creation and legacy. Maerz expertly weaves the voices of almost everyone involved in the project — from breakout star Matthew McConaughey to members of the crew — to create a highly entertaining, super-compelling look at a stoner cinema classic.

The Big Book of Hell is the holy grail of dark humor, packaged perfectly in a comic format. Growing up as a sarcastic kid from Brooklyn, this was the first humor book I read that I felt was aimed directly at my sensibilities. It has a very unique “substance-over-style” aesthetic that is striking and somehow managed to become widely identifiable. It dances around subjects, poking fun at the absurdities of the world it was written in. It really showed me that you don’t need to be a conventionally great artist to publish comics and that there is a market for dark humor comics. The book, which reads almost like a variety show, opened my eyes to ways to play with structure of an individual comic and a whole book.

My favorite thing about this book is its realness and authenticity. I have been a fan of Curtis Sittenfeld’s work since reading Prep, her first book. This particular story follows the romance between a comedy writer, Sally, who doesn’t consider herself conventionally attractive, and a famous male singer, Noah. Sittenfeld based the show where Sally works on Saturday Night Live, which was an interesting touch.

This doesn’t feel like a fantasy or as if it could never happen, thanks to Sittenfeld’s relatable characters and situations. Instead, it uncovers the fun, sexy parts of dating a famous celebrity as well as the less-than fun-parts—such as when photos of the couple are shared in the media and Sally’s appearance is dissected by the public. Overall, this was a playful, quick read!

Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller’s oral history Live From New York (published in 2002, updated and expanded a decade later) is probably the most popular book on sketch comedy giant Saturday Night Live, but I’m more partial to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad’s 1986 record of the show’s historic but tumultuous first ten years on the air. Unlike Live From New York, the vibe is less “hanging out with comedy giants” and more “I can’t believe these coked-out maniacs were able to stay alive, let alone create something that’s still going strong.” As SNL approaches its 50th anniversary, see the near-impossible alchemy that changed network television forever.

Mike Sacks is an authority on comedy and scholar who created two volumes which are a Comedy Bible for any humorist, interviewing the funniest people from the last fifty years. This is a must-read for any comedy geek. The other volume is And Here’s the Kicker. But wait, that’s all, as they say. Sacks has also become the king of kitsch producing a series of books mocking pop culture (Slouchers, Passable In Pink, Randy! and Stinker Lets Loose!)

This is the guy who wrote Deeper Thoughts and some of the best sketches on Saturday Night Live. He is a regular in The New Yorker and American Bystander and one of our generation’s finest humorists. This collection I feel is his best yet. I read a passage before I go to sleep to deal with this crazy world.

I read just about anything – dark fiction, cozy mysteries, thrillers,  and even plenty of non-fiction. But, while I rarely read memoirs, I will if it’s someone I truly admire.

Enter Betty White. I’ve always been a fan of her quick, one-liner wit, and this book doesn’t disappoint. But even the non-witty parts are packed with a punch. Betty’s wisdom is heartfelt and spot-on.